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The last practice session of the
day has ended with Scott Dixon posting the fastest speed of the
day with a Panoz chassis. Ryan Briscoe ran 10th, but that speed will
leave him in the 1st (slowest) practice group. (Briscoe would
later say that "being in the first practice grouping's all
through practice hurt him all weekend" due to that group
serving as track sweepers, having to deal with the residue from
the Hoosier tires of the Grand Am cars.) Sam Hornish moved
up to 6th fastest on this ICS T&S chart but Marco Andretti
moving from 8th in the morning session to 4th in the afternoon
showed the best gain in the top ten. Here's the IndyCar
breakdown of qualifying procedures for road and street
courses...
"As part of “Firestone
Fast Six” qualifying, practice plays a key role in determining
the starting field at the three road- and street-course events.
Under the procedure, all
entered cars participate in the initial practice session of the
three-day race weekend, with times determining the two groups
that will be used in the remaining 30-minute pre-qualifying
sessions.
The first day’s combined
practice times also determine the event qualifying order. The
driver with the fastest lap shall determine if the qualifying
order shall proceed based on the fastest lap to the slowest or
to invert the field in single-lap qualifying. That decision is
made one hour before the scheduled start of qualifications.
At the conclusion of single-lap
qualifying, the fastest six cars will participate in a
10-minute, European-style session to determine the first three
rows. In this procedure, the top car in single-lap qualifying is
not guaranteed the pole."
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